Wood, in May, as we saw, had carried with him into England copies of the Letters translated into our language: so says the instruction given by Elizabeth’s Government to Middlemore. Moray understood that Elizabeth intended to ‘take trial’ of Mary’s case, ‘with great ceremony and solemnities.’ He is ‘most loth’ to accuse Mary, though, privately or publicly, his party had done so incessantly, for a whole year. Now he asks that those who are to judge the case shall read the Scots translations of the Letters in Wood’s possession (why in Scots, not in the original French?), and shall say whether, if the French originals coincide, the evidence will be deemed sufficient.
Whatever we may think of the fairness of this proposal, it is clear that the French texts, genuine or forged, as they then stood, were already in accordance with the Scots texts, to be displayed by Wood. If the mysterious letter was in Wood’s hands in Scots, doubtless Moray had a forged French version of it. Any important difference in the French texts, when they came to be shown, would have been fatal. But, apparently, they were not shown at this time to Elizabeth.
It is unnecessary to enter on the complicated negotiations which preceded the meeting of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, at York (October, 1568), with Mary’s representatives, and with Moray (who carried the Casket with him) and his allies, Buchanan, Wood, Makgill, Lethington, and others. Mary had the best promises from Elizabeth. She claimed the right of confronting her accusers, from the first. If the worst came to the worst, if the Letters were produced, she believed that she had valid evidence of the guilt of Morton and Lethington, at least. In a Lennox Paper, of 1569, we read: ‘Whereas the Queen said, when she was in Loch Leven, that she had that in black and white that would cause Lethington to hang by the neck, which Letter, if it be possible, it were very needful to be had.’ Nau says that Bothwell, on leaving Mary at Carberry, gave her a band for Darnley’s murder, signed by Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, ‘and told her to take good care of that paper.’ Some such document, implicating Lethington at least, Mary probably possessed ‘in black and white.’ The fact was known to her accusers, she had warned Lethington as we saw (p. 189), and their knowledge influenced their policy. When Wood wrote to Moray, from Greenwich, on June 12, 1568, as to Scottish Commissioners to meet Elizabeth’s, and discuss Mary’s case, he said that it was much doubted, in England, whether Lethington should be one of them. To Lethington he said that he had expected Mary to approve of his coming, ‘but was then surely informed she had not only written and accused him, and my Lord of Morton as privy to the King’s murder, but affirmed she had both their handwritings to testify the same, which I am willed to signify to you, that you may consider thereof. You know her goodwill towards you, and how prompt of spirit she is to invent anything that might tend to your hurt. The rest I remit to your wisdom.... Mr. Secretary’ (Cecil) ‘and Sir Nicholas’ (Throckmorton) ‘are both direct against your coming here to this trial.’[264] But it was less unsafe for Lethington to come, and perhaps try to make his peace with Mary, than to stay in Scotland. Mary also, in her appeal to all Christian Princes, declares that the handwriting of several of her accusers proves that they are guilty of the crime they lay to her charge.[265] It is fairly certain that she had not the murder band, but something she probably did possess. And Nau says that she had told Lethington what she knew on June 16, 1567.
If the Casket Letters were now produced, and if Mary were allowed to defend herself, backed by her own charms of voice and tears, then some, at least, of her accusers would not be listened to by that assemblage of Peers and Ambassadors before which she constantly asked leave to plead, ‘in Westminster Hall.’ The Casket Letters, produced by men themselves guilty, would in these circumstances be slurred as probable forgeries. Mary would prefer not to come to extremities, but if she did, as Sussex, one of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, declared, in the opinion of some ‘her proofs would fall out the better.’
This I take to have been Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, this was her last line of defence. Indeed the opinion is corroborated by her letter from Bolton to Lesley (October 5, 1568). She says that Knollys has been trying tirer les vers du nez (‘to extract her secret plans’), a phrase used in Casket Letter II. ‘My answer is that I would oppose the truth to their false charges, and something which they perchance have not yet heard.’[266] Mr. Froude thinks that Mary trusted to a mere theatrical denial, on the word of a Queen. But I conceive that she had a better policy; and so thought Sussex.
Much earlier, on June 14, 1568, soon after her flight into England, Mary had said to Middlemore, ‘If they’ (her accusers) ‘will needs come, desire my good sister, the Queen, to write that Lethington and Morton (who be two of the wisest and most able of them to say most against me) may come, and then let me be there in her presence, face to face, to hear their accusations, and to be heard how I can make my own purgation, but I think Lethington would be very loath of that commission.’[267]
Lethington knew Mary’s determination. Wood gave him warning, and his knowledge would explain his extraordinary conduct throughout the Conference at York, and later. As has been said, Mary and he were equally able to ‘blackmail’ each other. Any quarrel with Moray might, and a quarrel finally did, bring on Lethington the charge of guilt as to Darnley’s murder. Once accused (1569), he was driven into Mary’s party, for Mary could probably have sealed his doom.
As to what occurred, when, in October, the Commission of Inquiry met at York, we have the evidence of the letters of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadleyr. We have also the evidence of one of Mary’s Commissioners, Lesley, Bishop of Ross, given on November 6, 1571, when he was prisoner of Elizabeth, in the Tower, for his share in the schemes of the Duke of Norfolk. All confessions are suspicious, and Lesley’s alleged gossip against Mary (she poisoned her first husband, murdered Darnley, led Bothwell to Carberry that he might be slain, and would have done for Norfolk!) is reported by Dr. Wilson, who heard it![268] ‘Lord, what a people are these, what a Queen, and what an ambassador!’ cries Wilson, in his letter to Burghley. If Lesley spoke the words attributed to him by Wilson, we can assign scant value to any statement of his whatever: and we assign little or none to Wilson’s.
In his confession (1571) he says that, when he visited Mary, at Bolton, about September 18, 1568, she told him that the York Conference was to end in the pardon, by herself, of her accusers: her own restoration being implied. Lesley answered that he was sorry that she had consented to a conference, for her enemies ‘would utter all that they could,’ rather than apologise. He therefore suggested that she should not accuse them at all, but work for a compromise. Mary said that, from messages of Norfolk to his sister, Lady Scrope, then at Bolton, she deemed him favourable to her, and likely to guide his fellow-commissioners: there was even a rumour of a marriage between Norfolk and herself. Presently, says Lesley, came Robert Melville, ‘before our passing to York,’ bearing letters from Lethington, then at Fast Castle. Lethington hereby (according to Lesley) informed Mary that Moray was determined to speak out, and was bringing the letters, ‘whereof he’ (Lethington) ‘had recovered the copy, and had caused his wife’ (Mary Fleming) ‘write them, which he sent to the Queen.’ He added that he himself was coming merely to serve Mary: how she must inform him by Robert Melville. This is Lesley’s revelation. The statements are quite in accordance with our theory, that Lethington, now when there was dire risk that the Letters might come out publicly, and that Mary would ruin him in her own defence, did try to curry favour with the Queen: did send her copies of the Letters.
For what it is worth, Lesley’s tale to this effect has some shadowy corroboration. At Norfolk’s Trial for Treason (1571), Serjeant Barham alleged that Lethington ‘stole away the Letters, and kept them one night, and caused his wife to write them out.’ That story Barham took from Lesley’s confession. But he added, from what source we know not, ‘Howbeit the same were but copies, translated out of French into Scots: which, when Lethington’s wife had written them out, he caused to be sent to the Scottish Queen. She laboured to translate them again into French, as near as she could to the originals wherein she wrote them, but that was not possible to do, but there was some variance in the phrase, by which variance, as God would, the subtlety of that practice came to light.’ ‘What if all this be true? What is this to the matter?’ asked the Duke.[269]